Sleeping in Her Bed
by tartan robes
Summary: "She has known small, rainy cottages and grand estates, but she cannot picture the things in between, the foreign houses Cora describes in endearments and grins."
1. Chapter 1

_I haven't been around in awhile, and I probably have other stories I should be finishing, but this happened. This being a very tedious, strange sort of story, steeped in purple prose and lethargic phrases. I really don't know what it is, but I blame Jas for all of it.  
_

She doesn't see the new head housemaid much – she passes in shadows and the ruffle of fabric, very much like a bird – but she knows she is there. She hears her voice. It doesn't fit in, not like the rest of the servants and Lords and Ladies who wander through Downton's hallways. They all speak in varying shades of British (which Cora knows to be different, though she can't always hear it; it's all the same to her), but not her. Her voice is different, the sound of her 'r's and the expressions that get whispered as the linens are stripped. She says words that Cora doesn't understand and her voice is harder, something inherently stronger than her husband's soft vowels or her mother-in-law's shrill cuts. She finds comfort in the small, fleeting comments, rarely meant for her but a dallying under-maid or an infuriating footman.

It reminds her she is not the only stranger within the estate; she's not the only one who doesn't belong.

* * *

She used to love her life. After the first year, after she had learned enough British expressions and clipped her accent haphazardly enough to become the sort of girl Robert would love, after he fell in love with her – after that first year, she loved it here. He would take her by the hand, fit her arm through his (and how they had fit together), take her this way and that through the estate, show her all the walks he had kept secret before. In the first year, when he would disappear, stalk off through the grounds, she had always lost sight of him too soon and found him too late. But in that year, she had known the landscape almost as well as he, came to know the land she had bought, the man who had come with it. She had been loved then.

Then there were daughters. And she had loved them too. Loved them because they were they were theirs, they were hers. She hadn't felt as though anything in the house were hers before. She had bought it all, saved it all - but there were always a thousand disparaging looks, a hundred snide comments on her wrong speech, wrong posture, wrong stitching – how she did not fit, wasn't meant for this place or its ancient finery. It was hers, but at the same time it didn't belong to her at all. Her daughter, she had thought, holding Mary in her arms for the first time, would make her less of a stranger. Her daughter would belong, but her daughter would be hers.

They hadn't wanted daughters, though. Girls didn't fit, not perfectly, with her husband's dreams or her mother-in-law's demands. They needed a son, a boy, an heir. A boy that Robert could toss into the air and hear shriek and roar with laughter. (Mary never shrieked; she bit her lip until it bled, but would never, ever scream, and Edith never seemed to have the voice for it. Her mouth wide open, but void of sound. Sybil only laughed.) They needed a boy and that was the one thing she could never give him. She had enough money to buy him a home, but not enough to give him a son. It was the sort of fate she found cruel. The sort of thing that made her want to cry and scream and smash, smash all the useless things she owned. But of course she didn't; that would be unladylike. ("If a lady is upset, she must never show it." Her mother-in-law had lectured her on the subject once and Cora had dug her nails into the palm of her hand. She had never wanted to live an existence without feeling, to be nothing more than a statue, seen and not touched.)

He had tried to love them, of course. She had too. And maybe she had been a good mother, initially at least, when they were nothing more than infants. There had been maids and servants to help her, to show her how to hold them and sing them songs and teach them words, but she had been attentive then. She had thought that if she had been near, if they had heard her voice, they would be like her (maybe even speak like her). But they grew, limbs unfurling like ferns, soft and strong all at once, and they had spoke in voices like their father's and walked like their Grandmother. It hadn't mattered, not really. (If a lady is disappointed, she must never show it.) She had sat by their bedside anyway, read them books and told them stories. (And they had all been of faraway places, of places beyond the ocean where the people were louder and faster.) Mary had always tired of stories quickly and Edith always had a hundred questions, but Sybil had been wide-eyed and attentive and so none of it had mattered.

But then they had grown bigger, spoke louder. "Why do you speak like that, Mama?" Mary had asked. "You don't hold your fork like that, Mama. The governess told us so."

And her children hadn't belonged her any longer. (Maybe they never had.)

* * *

She first sees the head housemaid, really sees her, when she is no longer one. The housekeeper cannot be much older than the Countess, but she has none of Cora's training, no instruction on how to walk or hold her head. She simply does, she simply is, and she is never berated for a foot out of place, never ashamed of an uneven pace. What a curious life she must lead, Cora thinks.

She is respectful, of course, but not in the same way the butler is. Carson has a reverence for them, has placed them on marble pedestals and thinks them all beautiful things. Mrs. Hughes speaks to her with no resentment or worship, simply as though she is another human. She speaks to the Countess with a level of respect she has not fully earned in the housekeeper's eyes, but which is demanded all the same. (And in that moment, the moment when Elsie Hughes' eyes narrowed ever so slightly, Cora knew she longed for this woman's respect more than anyone else's – more than Robert's or Violet's or Carson's. Because, surely, Elsie Hughes would respect her for the person she was, not the one she tried desperately to be.)

"You wanted to discuss the garden party, M'lady?" The housekeeper speaks and Cora is thrilled with every syllable.

"Yes, I was thinking –"

She thinks they must sound awfully funny, their two accents in the midst of all the other chatter. She can hear the spaces in her voice where hers slips, where the vowels contort and change, where they clamour and fight to be more British and then less. Elsie Hughes has none of that; she isn't ashamed of her voice, Cora thinks.

Perhaps she will try to feel the same.

* * *

She makes excuses to see the housekeeper. The impending garden party, the dinners to be held over the month, anything to keep the voice close. Robert is often gone, off to visit James and Patrick (but mostly Patrick). He insists he must know his heir better and Cora feels sick, knowing he must be trying to fill the void she cannot for him. (She tries not to think of the void next to her when she falls asleep, the coldness in his absence.) Her daughters are busied with the governess or with riding and her mother-in-law is to be avoided at all costs. It occurs to her that maybe she is just lonely. And Mrs. Hughes listens, always. Not like her mother-in-law, who tires of her American expressions and mannerism, tells her how things should be done instead. Mrs. Hughes only nods, "Of course, M'lady. I don't see why not, M'lady. We could manage that, M'lady."

* * *

She kisses the housekeeper in her bedroom, when there is no one but their several reflections to witness it. She had called her in, her face pointing towards the mirror, but her eyes focused on the image of the housekeeper, on the light behind her hair and the way her mouth had opened, "Yes, M'lady?"

She had turned around slowly, "Are you feeling quite alright, Mrs. Hughes?"

"Yes, M'lady."

And the Countess had stood – how small, she had thought, the housekeeper was, so much smaller and yet so much stronger, somehow, than she was – raised a hand to the woman's forehead. Elsie Hughes had felt cold, tensed under her touch. (And Cora had wondered if they knew affection below the staircase, or did they long for it as much as she did?)

"You must tell me if you are feeling unwell, Mrs. Hughes. I can't have my housekeeper falling ill."

And her hand had moved, trailed down the side of Elsie Hughes' face, fingertips lighter than a ghost's, too afraid to hold it for fear she would lose it completely, that it wasn't there at all. Her thumb had rested just below the housekeeper's lip.

"I do rely on you so dearly," she had whispered.

And then she had kissed the older woman. Not forcefully – a lady is never forceful – but careful, a question instead of a statement.

Elsie Hughes had said nothing when she finally pulled away. (She had not responded either; only allowed to be kissed, for Cora to rest her hand along the side of her face, to spray a collision of shadows and touches against her skin, each one lighter than the last.)

"Will that be all, M'lady?"

But it hadn't been all. No, nowhere close to it.

* * *

_This beginning is a bit slow, but I promise it, uh, gets better. Maybe._


	2. Chapter 2

She siphons off rooms and arranges more meetings. She locks the doors behind them. It starts innocently enough. She takes the woman's hands in hers, fascinated by the roughness of her palms, of the lines and callouses that have come from early mornings and late nights. (She's not sure what she thinks of when their hands are landlocked. Her mother's hands reminded her of ivory, of silver coins cooled in the rain, the shells of finery. And Robert's grip, always so tight, made her think of their cutlery, the slope of a china vase neck, and he grand arches of Downton's hallways. She thinks of none of these things when she holds the housekeeper's hands.) She holds the woman's jaw in the curve of her palm. The housekeeper never objects. (The housekeeper never says much more than business, but Cora tries to tell herself that's fine. Her permission is enough.)

Still, she has known enough people who held her out of duty. (That first year with Robert, his arm too tight around her waist, a mechanical sort of touch.) She needs something more: "Really, Mrs. Hughes, you cannot allow me to do all the work." It's a whisper in her ear, the flower arrangements forgotten.

There is a moment where nothing happens. She exhales and Elsie Hughes breathes in (their fingers are still bound and fastened together). The housekeeper bites her lip barely, faintly, and then she leans in.

When her housekeeper kisses her for the first time (the door locked and curtains drawn over the windows), her hands slide of the Countesses grip and rest – barely there – on either side of her face.

The Countess never objects.

* * *

If someone asked Elsie Hughes what exactly she was doing, she wouldn't have an answer for them.

She knows better than to get entangled with their kind, the people who exist above a flight of stairs, their hands still smooth and their skin weighed down in coloured jewels. She knows better than to let the Countess hold her hands; certainly, she knows better than to kiss the woman.

But it's been so long, so long since she's been wanted (she thinks of her sister, the moment when Anice learned how to braid her own hair), needed (the keys crash against each other at her hip).

The Countesses is a tall woman; she knows how to hold her head up with pride, knows how to look the part even when her voice fails her. But when the door is locked, she sees the Countess standing by her window. She looks very narrow then, a small silhouette against the wide window frame. Her fingers knit together, her neck cranes.

"He's not back yet," she says. "He said he'd be back this evening."

(She is tall, but, her hands a series of nervous beats against her lips, the Countess is very much a child.)

She slips next to the lady's side, slips her hands around hers.

"I'm being foolish," Cora corrects herself. "What does it matter – if he's home or if he's there?" It doesn't sound, Elsie thinks, like it doesn't matter. "He doesn't care to spend his time with us anyway." And she knows, very clearly, she is not part of the 'us'. (The thought reassures her more than it ought to.)

She holds the Countess' hands tighter, "Hush, M'lady."

When Cora smiles at her, she looks a little less lost.

When Cora smiles at her, she can't make her mouth not smile back.

* * *

Some days, the Countess finds her at the bottom of the stairs, hisses at her to come. On those days, the door is locked with excessive force, Cora allows herself to fall into her bed. (She cannot shed herself of the grace ingrained into every motion; even in her recklessness she is beautiful. Perhaps even more so.) She stares up at the ceiling, rubs at her temples. The other hand calls the housekeeper closer, finds the other woman's hand and urges her to sit near her, next to her.

Cora turns her head, rests it at Elsie's side. She looks up at the woman, "Do you ever wish you had children, Mrs. Hughes?" (How curious, Cora thinks, it is to call a single woman 'missus'. It's almost as if she married herself.)

She sees the housekeeper swallow. For a moment, Elsie Hughes is still. Cora's fingers envelope her hands, tug at them, insistent.

"At times, M'lady," she says, more quiet than Cora has ever known her to be.

"You can have mine, if you wish," Cora finds herself grinning. "Perhaps they'd prefer a Scotswoman to an American. At least you're from the right side of the ocean."

"They love you very much," Elsie says because it's the right thing to say, because it's certainly the truth. What child does not love their mother? (A fist closing around her wrist, a woman held against a wall – it's easy, she thinks, for a child not to love their father. She allows herself to wonder if the young Crawleys are fortunate, their father so easily strayed from home. She swallows, banishing the thought quickly – it's not her place to think of such things.)

"That's just the thing," Cora's fingers are drifting up the other woman's arm. She frowns deeply, "I'm not sure they do."

* * *

Sometimes the Countess cries.

She is too much a lady to cry freely. She merely sits at the edge of her bed, her arms wrapped around her like snakes. Her face is too pale and her eyes too blank. Elsie Hughes closes the door behind her gently (it's late now, the children asleep and Robert away in London; she told the lady's maid to get an early night's rest).

When Cora looks at her, she feels her stomach lurch. (There's a darkness in her face; Elsie thinks that even if she lit a hundred candles, the shadows wouldn't leave. Still, she will try. She's needed now.) She sits behind the Countess and the woman turns in her arms, buries her head against Elsie's shoulder.

"I hate it here," the Countess shivers.

"Don't say such things, M'lady," she pulls gently at the lady's body, urges her to lie in her bed. Cora's hands snatch at hers, her ghost of a face shaking furiously.

"No," she says, "No, I can't sleep like that anymore." (Pressed against the headboard, her hands always seek out the absence, the space where he should be.)

She lays the Countess down, head at the foot of the bed, covers her in a blanket too thick for the night (but perhaps it will stop the shivering; she doubts it, but she can hope, hope it's merely the weather).

"Come," Cora whispers, her hands tugging again.

When she looks at the Countess, her face is still too pale, she can't manage the no. She hesitates, allows herself to be drawn under the covers. (She has never lain in a bed with anyone but her sister. Cora's arm drift around her; the Countess rests her head against her breast. The feeling is unfamiliar; she can't bring herself to leave.)

There is silence and breathing; the Countess doesn't fall asleep.

"Tell me about New York," Elsie urges when the Countess' lips meet her cheek. (She has never been like this with another; she has never been in a bed like this – it's all too soft, too warm.) _Tell me about New York_, she urges, because if the Countess hates it here, she must love it elsewhere. (She wishes she loved a place, wishes she could say the same. The bruises under her skin stir; she closes her eyes, focuses on Cora's hands, the way the rest on her chest, the feeling of the Countess breathing.)

She closes her eyes, focuses on Cora' voice in her ear. In the darkness, roads and streets unfold. The room becomes full of noise and wet cement, flashes of lights and a whirlwind of motion. She notes the way the Countess holds her tighter, the way her voice rises – something bright in the way she speaks. Lighter, maybe. Happier, maybe. Cora describes the bones of building and the sinews of plants, beams at geography Elsie cannot picture in her head. (She has known small, rainy cottages and grand estates, but she cannot picture the things in between, the foreign houses Cora describes in endearments and grins.) She wishes she could. (A part of her is wide awake in wonder, longing to explore the strange streets, to see the place Cora thinks home, will always think of as home.)

"You'd love it," Cora says with certainty, though Elsie is not too sure. (But she wants to love it. She wants to love it dearly.)

The Countess is kissing her neck. "When I go next," she whispers, her voice a child's with a secret, fevered with excitement, "I'll take you. You'll enjoy it ever so much."

Elsie Hughes forces herself to smile. (The promise is empty – not because the Countess doesn't meant it, but because of its impossibility. She knows, very clearly, it will never happen. She never goes to London; she will never see New York.)

Cora curls against her again, fingers playing with her collar. She feels her smiling against her skin, the moment when the Countess exhales, butterfly eyes fluttering shut. "Tell me," the lady whispers, yawns, "about Scotland."

(Elsie hesitates then. She cannot tell the Countess of way it rained, of mud chewing away at your legs, of falling and getting too close to fires. She cannot tell her about the lightning that existed outside and the thunderclaps inside – a woman falling against the wall, a man twisting her wrist. She cannot tell her about her sister, of locking the door and urging her to sleep, of trying, desperately trying, to keep the symmetry in her tiny, lovely face.)

"There's not much to say, M'lady." (There's not much she wants to say.)

She doesn't have to. The Countess is asleep at her side.

(She waits before leaving, tries tuck Scotland away and rebuild New York.)

(She doesn't get far.)

* * *

She tries to keep her face even as she descends the steps. Surely, surely nothing can be different. (Is lying any different than kissing? Has anything really changed?) Her hands twist around her wrists, wrings them raw and dry.

"Mrs. Hughes?"

She turns, "Yes, Mr. Carson?"

"I was wondering if – are you all right?"

She must look pale. Pale and shaken with a mind across the Atlantic. She tries to smile, "Yes, perfectly so." She pauses, "I'm just tired."

It isn't like her to lie to him, but she couldn't very well explain this. What he would think of her, what he would think her Ladyship. Charles Carson's mind is as black and white as his uniform; there would be no redemption for either of them.

He doesn't look convinced, but she prompts him forward, "You were wondering?"

"If you had a moment, perhaps we could go over the – but if you're tired –"

"No," she says too quickly. (The idea of her room, her bed, sleep all suffocates her. She wants anything but it.) "No, I – I always have time for household affairs," she stumbles there, the words twisted and tumbling out wrong, the double meaning singeing her tongue.

"But if you're too tired –"

"I insist," she mutters, sweeping past him and into the parlour.

When he offers her wine, she refuses.

(But there's comfort in the numbers, in the planning and accounts – in all the things, her mind nags, that she should be doing with the Countess but isn't. The lights in the room aren't as bright and furniture is not as new, but she breathes easier here.)

(When Mr. Carson looks up from the paperwork, concerned perhaps, her smile isn't forced.)

* * *

_Thank you so much for your reviews and alerts ande verything thus far; it does mean a lot to me! I hope this section doesn't disappoint.  
_


	3. Chapter 3

They're discussing flowers again – it's always flowers and silverware and seating plans – when there's a sharp knock on the door. (Elsie takes it as a sign to pull away, but Cora's hand only clutches hers tighter.)

"Mama," the voice on the other side of the door is shrill, a child playing grown-up. Cora can see her eldest daughter clearly through the layers of wood and dust. Her chin will be tilted skywards, her chest puffed up and self-righteous. "Mama," she knocks again, insistent.

(For a moment, she had allowed herself to forget what an English accent sounded like.)

"What are you doing, Mama?" The second voice is meek. Cora closes her eyes. She can see Edith, too, stretching on her tiptoes, her body curling around Mary's shoulders, pressed against the door. Eager and almost desperate, none of the subtly they scold her, tell her a lady should possess. (There's time for her, she thinks. But later, she'll forget to give her middle daughter the time to begin with.)

"Please let us in, Mama," the third voice does not beg, merely suggests. Cora thinks the third voice is filled with light. A sort of energy she lost in New York alleyways, discarded into the ocean.

She's turning Elsie's fingers white, but the housekeeper never protests.

Instead, she says, "Perhaps you should let them in, M'lady."

Cora hesitates before letting go of her hand.

* * *

The children don't acknowledge her – they've been trained not to.

Instead they prowl around the room. Lady Mary sits next to her mother, hands folded tightly, not saying but surveying. The image, Elsie thinks, of her grandmother. (It is not the compliment it should be, not in her mind.) Edith imitates her sister, tries to slide a fraction closer to her, but Mary – with the nimblest of shadow movement, the pecking of her elbow more like a gust of wind – nudges her aside. (Elsie thinks of her sister again, but doesn't dare think what could have happened, what would of happened, if she ever pushed her away. There are hands around her neck; she wills herself to breathe.) Sybil cannot be urged to sit. She gallops around the four of them, wide-eyed and bright. Her mouth a river, a new story emerging every second. (Elsie raises a hand to her cheek; she feels exhausted.)

"Mama –"

"Mama –"

"Mama –"

"I'll come back later, M'lady," she says more harshly than she means it.

For a moment, the chirping and squeaking voices dissipate. Cora fixes her with a glare, _Don't leave me here._

She sees the Countess' fingers stretch, reach for hers –

"Mama –"

Cora reconsiders.

"I'll come back later," she repeats: a promise.

When she shuts the door behind her, she can still hear the children buzzing in her ears.

* * *

The Countess undresses her with difficulty.

Sitting in her chair (entirely too soft, nothing like the wooden one she has downstairs), Elsie studies her three reflections. They all look so tired, she thinks, not worthy of the polished glass and engraved frame. Cora's hands hesitate above her spine. She hovers behind Elsie cautiously, out of place but not entirely uncomfortable.

Elsie reaches around her back (she ignores the smallest of trembles, the fault line she's never been able to outgrow), "Here, M'lady, these hooks here."

"You could have been a lady's maid," Cora breathes, fascinated, almost, at the way the fabric parts under her fingers.

"Oh no," Elsie's response is automatic, "I don't have the training for that, M'lady. Not my calling."

"Is it a lot of training then, being a lady's maid?" Cora's voice is airy, but Elsie's three mirrored selves still frown.

"I imagine so, M'lady."

"How funny," Cora says though she doesn't think it funny at all; the dress slips off Elsie's shoulders, "you all trained so hard to be here and I just woke up with it all."

It is funny, Elsie would concede. Not a joke, but funny all the same. She doesn't think much of it though, of why her combs have wooden handles and Cora's gleam in the light. She doesn't about how she used to dust a thousand treasures that were never ever hers. She doesn't even think about how much more a footman is paid than a maid, how much more a butler gets than a simple housekeeper. The thoughts aren't becoming. They don't do her any good.

"You had your lessons as well M'lady, with your governess," Elsie says.

Cora has flown from behind her. She flutters through the room, wading through pools of warm light and over a canopy of fallen silks. "Yes, well, the difference is that mine turned out to be completely useless," the Countess mutters, a stroke of bitterness as she fishes through the piles of fabric. It leaves her quickly; she beams as she draws a dress up to the light. "This is the one."

Elsie is ushered to another corner, another mirror, another tired face. Under her guidance, Cora's hands fly along her spine (the Countesses hands are cold, so cold, and Elsie isn't sure why she imagined them otherwise), fit the dress along her sides, over her shoulders. Cora's hands relax, rest along her waist. The Countess' lips smile against her neck, "You could be a proper lady. A better one than me, I'm sure."

Elsie can't make herself agree. The dress presses at her wrong, coils around her and strangles her chest. It's beautiful, of course. Beading around the collar and details curling around the sleeves. It's beautiful, but heavy. Cora takes her hand, giddily leading her around the room. ("The men here," she says, linking arms with the housekeeper and puffing out her chest, "lead their women like this." But then the Countess' smile becomes sly, its whimsy evaporates, "But in America," she whispers and her hand snakes ever lower, "they hold their ladies like so.") Elsie clutches onto her closely, not out of want but a need for stability, for something to anchor her upright. (She looks ridiculous, she thinks, she looks ridiculous and she can hardly breathe.)

Cora laughs as she starts on the clasps again. (And Elsie can only exhale, thankful.) "Second one first, M'lady," Elsie reminds her as the fingers peel away the heavy cloth. There's the sound of laughter, the coolness of her hands and the warmth of her lips.

Elsie can't tell if she enjoys it because she loves the feeling or because she'd rather have this prison than her fabric one.

* * *

She undoes Cora's corset slowly and then hers after, the Countess kissing her jaw. She tells herself this is fine. (Her mind runs through a thousand lists: Lord Grantham is out, the girls are busy, she's preoccupied the maids, the door is locked -) She tells herself there's nothing wrong. (Cora's hands are on her hips and she feels incredibly small.) She tells herself nothing wrong.

Cora says she wants her. (And how wonderful it is to be wanted, the heat and the friction, the warmth of her tongue and cold of her fingertips.)

Cora says she needs her. (And how compelling it is to be needed; she hears the swaying of keys, though they've been discarded on the floor. She holds the Countess tighter.)

They rest with their heads at the foot of the bed because Cora still cannot stand it the other way round (perhaps she never will, not again), and, much later, she hears the younger woman's voice in her ear again.

Cora says she loves her. (She thinks that she's imagined it, though she can't say why she would have. She prays it to be a dream.)

She takes the Countess' face in her hands, palms shuddering like butterflies against her cheekbones, kisses her once more. _Hush.  
_

* * *

The light is more orange than yellow and the housekeeper's body is patterned with the shadows of trees. The branches stretch along the bed, ensnare them both. When she turns in her bed, everything seems to glow. The pearls lying on her vanity, the mirrors that mark the corners, the keys resting on the floor. She twists through shadows, her head tilting as she watches Elsie Hughes lace up her corset.

"I can't do that myself," she says and the housekeeper turns her head, questioning.

She rolls again, lazily catching her own in her hands, fishing the corset up. "I can't tie my own," she says again. Elsie Hughes is slipping her dress over her head, refastening the keys to her hip. (Cora has come to adore the sound of them, she thinks them like a metal bird.)

"Turn around then," the housekeeper says gently. (Cora notices that she's forgotten "M'lady", but she doesn't mind it; a part of may even prefer it.) The rough fingers pull at her cautiously, "Is this all right?"

There's something caught in her throat, so Cora can only nod. Elsie finishes tying and Cora feels her back arch straight, her breath leave her. She feels so much stronger here, in her room with none of her finery and only the housekeeper's hands, gently adjusting the mess her hair must be. Her own hands seek out the older woman's, clutches one firmly. She feels so strong here, the shadows swaying over their skin and holding her, just holding her.

Elsie Hughes eases her into her dress, but as soon as she leaves, Cora only collapses into her bed once more.

She closes her eyes, listens to the mechanical bird fly down the hallway.

Somewhere along the way, its song gets lost with the ones outside her window.

* * *

_I'm never really sure how to pace these updates, but here's the next part. Ah, so, uh, that's that. Thank you again to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. It really means so much to me, especially with a story as... odd as this one. _


	4. Chapter 4

Sometimes, the Countess leans on the bannister, peers down the stairs. One doesn't go to the basement of the house. Certainly a lady doesn't make a habit of it. But she's fascinated by it, neck twisting to see while not being seen. If they see her, they'll bow and stand rigid. She doesn't want that. She simply wants to observe, wants to see _her _world, how _she _lives.

Down the steps and through a doorway, Mrs. Hughes is bandaging a maid's hand. She leans farther, listens closer.

"You have to be more careful," the housekeeper scolds. "Efficiency is more important than speed."

She releases the maid's hand, "Better than injury, at any rate."

The girl says something she cannot hear and she squints to see if the housekeeper is smiling. Their voices, their faces, it all becomes a blur.

The Countess ascends the stairs.

* * *

Other days, those few days when the maids can be ushered away and the housekeeper can be pulled in close, close, closer, Cora thinks she ought to be a painter. (All the ladies have hobbies like that, some sort of art or craft to channel all the carefully preached elegance. On this side of the ocean, they all seem to sew, embroider flowers and trees; she remembers, vaguely, that there were more painters in America, where they pricked they hands with oil instead of blood.) She doesn't think this as she undoes the hooks on the housekeeper's dress (she's still slow, but she better now, able to undress at least), but after the sheets have been knotted and her lungs ache from breathing, from being. She thinks it when Elsie Hughes ties up her corset, when the laces cross over the housekeeper's spine. She ought to be a painter. She'd like that, like to capture the reds of skin and the curl of shadows along their faces.

(She becomes more aware of shape and colour: her mother-in-law's purpled collars; the diamond cut-outs of her sister-in-law's lace; Robert's sleeves, the pigment starched clean out of them; the girlish pastels than whistle around her daughters' ankles.)

When Elsie Hughes turns her back to her - the housekeeper is not one to linger, especially not in her bed, where there and an infinite number of dangers and harsh punishments - and she imagines the colour scheme.

Cora thinks she would paint her in dark greys and muted yellows. A house comes to mind. The sort of house that has been constructed from stone, but its rocks, bleached from the sun, resemble sand instead. The sort of house that has ivy and vines growing over it.

The Countess is certain she's seen houses like them before, though where she can't say. (They're not British in nature, nothing like her American cottages either, but something of them - and she tells herself this over and over again, the location on the tip of tongue and then lodged somewhere in her throat - makes her think of home.)

(Though, once all the laces have been tied and the keys fastened to the woman's hip, Cora reminds herself that she is a stranger to that word. She has known piles of houses, but not many homes.)

* * *

They go to dinner. Robert helps her out of the car and a part of her is shocked by how smooth his hands are. They walk into the party side by side, and it becomes easy, so easy to believe nothing is wrong. Certainly, she thinks, looking at him, studying the profile she knows so well (and then, at the same time, not at all), he doesn't believe there's a problem to begin with. (But you have to present, she reminds herself quickly, to notice the flaws. Absence just another form of ignorance.)

She loses him between the high chambers and grand portraits, between glasses clicking together while women laugh. He settles in between the china and silverware, completely at ease and always at home.

Someone hands her a drink and she looks at him again, his body distorted in the pale liquid. Perhaps their love is like the tides. Washing in and then fleeing, just as quickly as it came. It isn't that she doesn't love him and it cannot be (this she forces herself to believe) that he does not love her. They just love other things too. Robert is shoulder to shoulder with James. He just loves his heir more. His heir, the boy he always wanted, and the boy she couldn't give him. And how can she blame him for not loving their daughters, from slipping away time and time again, when she herself cannot begin to understand them? She wills herself not to be angry - at him, at herself, at anyone. It is, she thinks vehemently, what it is. All of them are what they are, nothing more.

And then she thinks of the way she twisted herself, changed her pace and voice and home, all for her mother, for this title, for him. They are what they are, even if they're, so mangled in translation, now nothing at all.

* * *

Robert comes to her bed that night and she thinks it might the first time she's seen him all month. (During the day, he ushers Patrick around the grounds or walks long and far away; at dinner, his eyes are always somewhere else. He is always away, his mind lost in the past or the future but never the present. She doesn't let herself wonder if she ever graces his mind. Part of her already knows the answer.)

But here he is, beside her. She can't sleep this way (next to him, head against the board and a mountain of pillows and lace), not anymore, not even as she allows her hands to slide around him. He is here, but he's still so far away.

Maybe she is too.

* * *

Cora is not looking at her, but past her, lost somewhere out the window.

"I think," the Countess says suddenly, waking up from a daze, "you would have made a very good mother."

Something knots inside her stomach, Elsie can only say, "Thank you, M'lady."

"Did you mother dote on you much?" Cora says and something else twists inside her (a woman sitting alone in the corner of the room, a woman slumped and tired and broken).

"No, M'lady, I'm afraid she didn't - couldn't," she loathes how unsteady her voice has become.

The Countess doesn't notice, "My mother never... She was never the doting type. Perhaps if she had been..."

Silence eats away at them both. Cora's mouth opens, hesitates, and then, "Does it just come naturally then?"

"Pardon, M'lady?"

"Being a mother -"

"I'm no mother -"

"To your girls, does it come naturally?"

"I have a sister, M'lady," she says, as if it explains a thing. (Anice huddled close to her in the dark, whispering stories into her ear, pressing her close. Anything to make the thunder go away, anything so her sister didn't hear, didn't know -)

"A sister," Cora murmurs, "perhaps that's it. Perhaps if I had a sister, I would understand girls. Perhaps I would -"

Another tremendous silence. "Perhaps I would be a good mother. Perhaps I would know how to _care _for people. I seem to be so rubbish at the whole business."

And, suddenly, Elsie knows what she needs to say: "You know how to care, M'lady."

The Countess takes her hands, tries to smile, "Not well enough. Not nearly well enough."

(And Elsie Hughes says nothing, because who knows what _enough_ really is? Where it ends and _too much _begins?)

* * *

Her lady's maid retires and she can only shrug. It's very easy to forget about lady's maids. They seem, at times, more like gloves than people, shadows than faces. A gust of wind twirls you into your clothes, ties up your laces, brings you your breakfast and then breezes away.

Miss O'Brien has more presence than her last maid, but she weighs it carefully, able to evaporate at will, to become nothing at all. When Miss O'Brien does up her corset, she cannot feel the woman's hands, but she watches her maid carefully in the mirror. Something about her seems sharp, it's the only way she can put it. Sharp. She shouldn't like this quality; a lady, and therefore her maid, should be soft and gentle - but she does all the same.

It seems, as of late, she is attracted to all the wrong things. (But there isn't any shame, just a quiet understanding.)

* * *

The dream nestles itself between the corners of her frown, her knitted brows. She does not imagine so much as feel, feel herself taking the housekeeper's rough hand in hers, of leading her down street after streets, peering through windows and seeing their faces side by side (not like in her vanity, one behind the other) in the glass. She feels, aches to wrap Elsie in a fur coat, to fumble with the hooks as she dresses her in borrowed finery, to take her, not Robert, to house after house in the evening. (The manners she does not know, Cora tells herself in crackling impulses, a dull fireplace warmth settling in her blood, will not matter. Elsie will be a friend from overseas and Cora will pass her mannerisms off as the British way - no, the Scottish way. No one would question it.)

She pushes her food around at dinner. In her plate, she only sees the Atlantic. Robert is telling yet another story about Patrick (Mary is attentive, but her delicate features have become pointed, her entire face a glare; Edith's eyes are wide, soaking in every word; Sybil kicks lightly under the table, her mind somewhere else) and she says nothing.

She says nothing. Mary's frown grows deeper. She says nothing. Robert laughs at the hazy recollection of a joke. She says nothing. Sybil tugs at Edith's sleeve. Dinner passes and she eats next to nothing too. Dinner passes and the girls are ushered out of the room; she listens to their tiny heels dancing down the hallway. Cora bites her lip, bites her tongue, bites, bites, bites -

And then she hears it. In the other room, Mary is asking Carson why they can't have wine, but somewhere else down the hall, keys whistle.

"Perhaps we could go to America next summer," the words tumble carelessly from her mouth, too quick and too rushed - too American. (But how she longs for America, for that hand in hers, for the grey skyline and loud voices.)

Robert looks at her curiously. She wonders if this is how he looked at her over dinner, if he looked at her at all. "Isn't Sybil a bit young for all of that? Are you sure the girls would like it there?" (And she knows he means, _I've never been very fond of the place_. And she knows he means, _no._)

She wants to say, _then they don't need to come, then none of you need to come_. She wants to say, _then perhaps I'll go on my own. _

She bites her lip, her cheek, her tongue, says, "Oh yes, of course. How silly of me."

A smile is feigned, too wide and too crooked. She hears the keys again, moving away from the door, back down the hallway.

"Sometimes," she tries to laugh, "I don't know where my mind goes."

* * *

Every time she opens a locked door (and in her profession, one opens many doors, many times a day), she thinks of the gears inside her, stopped and rusted. She does wish she loved the Countess. She wishes it desperately. (She has always tried to be authentic, principled.) She wishes something inside of her would turn.

Then again, she thinks as the door clicks and swings to the side, she has always been a stranger to love. Loyalty is easy to stomach, affection ebbed and flowed, but love? She shuts the door behind her. She doesn't know where to begin with love (or if it ever _begun _inside of her). She's not fond of it: the kissing and touching. They're strange gestures, too soft and too close (too close, a part of her mind urges, to darker ones, heavier blows). She hates it, but does it anyway. This is how people show affection, this is how they fall in love. Maybe, she allows herself to be childish, to believe, if she through the motions, it'll become true. After all, she tells herself, people fall in love every day.

She sighs, tries to focus on the accounts instead. She's always liked number, their rigidness and parametres. Nothing so unclear and vague as love or romance -

"Mrs. Hughes?"

She turns. He's standing in her doorway, perhaps even stooping a bit (the men are always so tall and grand and the women so small, invisible), two cups of tea trembling in his palms.

"I just thought - you said you wouldn't be busy this evening and I thought - unless you're -"

She smiles, stands and pushes out a chair for him, "Tea would be a great kindness, Mr. Carson."

They sit opposite each other and she knows she ought to focus on him, the lines in his face and restless movements of his fingers, but when she catches her reflection, her mind wanders. She hates the pressure. What she prefers, she thinks, feels, knows (who can tell anymore? She can't differentiate her head from her heart) she likes _this _more. A table apart from Mr. Carson, a cup of tea and talking only, solely, mostly business and work (not soliloquies and sonnets, whispered adorations).

But it's not a cold exchange, she thinks, finally meeting the butler's eyes; sometimes Mr. Carson smiles, the facade cracks and she remembers that he is not just a butler, she is something more than a housekeeper. (The thought never occurs to her in the Countess' bed.)

Mr. Carson smiles, a table away, and pressure lifts.

Perhaps she has been going through the wrong motions.

* * *

She's curled up on the steps again, when she sees a door open. Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson step out, laughing. (It occurs to her she's never heard Elsie laugh before, not once, not truly. Something flashes through her, sharp and hot.) She watches them speak, caught in that doorway, not moving. They don't touch, but they seem so close. They don't touch, but something about them seems locked together. Cora wonders how that can be. It's suddenly too dark, too cramped, too noisy on the steps. She turns sharply, reaches for the door.

"Are they very close?" She asks O'Brien later. "Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson?"

A pause, O'Brien's lips are a tight line, a thought passes behind her eyes. "I believe so, M'lady. One could say that."

She fiddles with her earring, "And have they always been this close?"

O'Brien's face contorts, for a moment another expression flickers through it, but Cora misses the feeling.

"Not always, M'lady, but long enough."

She adjusts the earring for the thousandth time, "Thank you, O'Brien, I can manage."

* * *

_This story was originally meant to be a sort of companion to "Like Matches". They can both stand on their own, of course, but I've hinted at bits of the other fic here. Unfortunately I just haven't... written/shared up to the relevant points. Oh well, it doesn't really matter. Uh, anyway, as always: thank you so much to everyone who reviewed. You guys were all especially kind this last chapter and I'm so glad you're sticking with this story despite how odd it is.  
_


	5. Chapter 5

Taylor talks incessantly on their way to town. Cora is almost thankful for it. It's so lovely today, isn't it M'lady? Miss Edith was found in the garage yesterday, M'lady, but she was simply playing a good game of hide-and-seek with her sister, M'lady, nothing to worry about. It's aimless stuff, the sort she had forced herself to learn all those years ago. Taylor says it all too quickly, though, his words like bullets - bang, bang, bang. It's not how a lady speaks, the slow syllables and airy glances. But she appreciates anyway; the more things there are to think about, the less she has to think at all.

She doesn't think, either, when she enters the store, her hands roaming over the fabric. They stop when they feel fur, dark and warm. The coat is covered in it. She slips it off the rack and gathers it in her hands, presses it against her chest. Vaguely, she remembers a relative - an aunt or perhaps it was merely a family friend - with a coat like it. She remembers playing dress up in the closet, her parents drinking in another room, slipping the foreign coat over her tiny arms. She remembers the feeling: warm and safe and wanted. It's perfect. She checks the price; it's ridiculously high. It's perfect.

After all, she decides, her hands full of fur and her thoughts full of anything but Taylor's babble, isn't this love? She'll remind the housekeeper of it, of her. Isn't this what love is? She's never known it in another form. She bought Robert's home and heart not with secret smiles or pressing her knee too close to his, but through fortune. She bought her mother's affection with a title. Why should this be any different? It's all she's ever known.

* * *

The coat lies across her bed as O'Brien changes her dress for the evening. Out of the corner of her eye, the lady's maid spies it. (O'Brien doesn't look or see, she spies. Small flicks this way and that, more shadows than glances. She's brief, but she sees more detail than most. She spies.)

"Is that new, M'lady?"

"Oh - that - oh no - no it's not."

"Do you need me to alter it then?"

"No, no. That won't be necessary, O'Brien. It's nothing, really."

She's never been a bad liar, certainly Robert could never tell. But this one is harder to swallow. The coat is anything but nothing.

* * *

Elsie Hughes holds the coat up in the light.

"I want very much for you to have this," the Countess has beamed. "So very much." (She had kissed her too, but Elsie could only remember the words.)

The coat is very much like the Countess' dresses and so she doesn't dare put it on, afraid of being suffocated under it, of forgetting how to breathe. It would be too warm, she thinks, too much. It's all too much. She turns it over, hands searching the seams. The coat is perfect, of course, not a hair out of place, too perfect. She looks for a dropped stitch, an alteration. She searches for pockets (she's always preferred her coats to be plain, their only adornment pockets and buttons and ridges, a thousand different ways to organize, a thousand different ways to hide), for a message or a note or something, anything that makes this coat from Cora, not from a store.

She finds none of it, only too-thick perfection. She wonders then, what the point of the coat is. It's simple a price tag and nothing more. She wonders -

A lump forms in her throat. It is one thing to be wanted, it is one thing to be needed, but this - whatever this is, they are - it is another thing to stupid. Hopelessly ignorant. (She has always prided herself on her common sense, her wit; she feels too heavy, drowning in something other than finery.)

Whatever they are can't be. Whatever they are isn't real. She doesn't love the Countess and, she sets the coat down, she knows she never will. It isn't in her. The suffocating fur and jeweled compliments - it isn't in her.

(The Countess needs to be loved, but she cannot love her. The Countess needs to be held, but she will no longer hold her. It's all too much. It will never be enough.)

* * *

She opens her pantry door to find Miss O'Brien hovering over her chair, coat in hand.

"Unless I'm mistaken, I believe this is my office."

The lady's maid ignores her - or perhaps she simply does not hear.

"Can I help you, Miss O'Brien?"

Sarah O'Brien's head snaps up, her eyes a careful sort of anger, "She isn't yours."

"I beg your pardon?"

"She isn't yours," the maid insists again, forceful.

Elsie Hughes is sick of lying. Her hands fall to her sides and she breathes the words out, exasperated, "I don't think she's anyone's." (If anything, they are both hers.)

They stare at each other for a long while before Miss O'Brien looks away, her fingers combing through the fur.

Elsie Hughes is sick of lying, but that doesn't mean she won't. "Her Ladyship gave it to me to alter -"

"You're not a lady's maid -"

"She didn't want to trouble you. You already have so much to do -"

"I'm not busy," O'Brien is staring at her again and she remembers all the other times the maid studied her, all the other things she could never hide. "And my needlework is better than yours anyway. I'll do it."

She doesn't utter a single protest as O'Brien gathers the coat into her arms and evaporates in the doorway.

(The coat is never altered, never tampered, but shoved - in a single motion full of anger and bitterness and perhaps jealousy - under the lady's maid's bed. It mummifies in the dust. Perhaps it's better that way.)

* * *

The housekeeper tries to think of nothing but the party for the next week. (It used to, shut up in the Countess' chamber, feel like an eternity away. Now it is close, but never close enough.) She holds her keys more carefully when she walks, changes her route, disappears between the high vases and faded paint, tries to become another portrait, tries to become the house itself. (No one thinks about the house, it simply is. No one notices the house, they simply pass through it. And the house, for all its trinkets and treasures, never suffocates, never feels a single thing.)

But Cora finds her all the same, holds her hands on the steps and leans in close.

Elsie feels herself grow stiff; she cannot lie, not anymore: "M'lady, there's something I need to tell you -"

"Do you? Oh good," Cora only smiles wider, "I have so much to tell you. Did you like your present?" She's a child again, Elsie thinks, animated and electric. She's a child again with those wide, wide eyes. She's fragile again.

But it will hurt either way, sooner or later, and sooner is always, always better.

"Yes, about that, M'lady I'd like to thank you for it -"

Cora's hands tighten around hers, "Oh but think nothing of it. You deserve it."

Carefully, Elsie slips her hands from Cora's. If the Countess notices the absence, she says nothing, only leans in ever-closer.

"You must wear it at the party at the party. You simply must." (For the Countess wants nothing more than that. For the housekeeper to wear her coat, to be hers. To be hers before everyone else, before everything else.)

"You simply must," the Countess repeats again, growing more sure of herself by the moment.

Elsie forces the smile.

* * *

_I hate coats. Coats and hats. Too many feelings attached to both of them, really. But one more chapter left! (And then, I'm sure, many of you will be thankful to be rid of this ship.) As always, thank you so, so much for your reviews. I know I always say that, but they do mean quite a lot to me.  
_


	6. Chapter 6

The party feels like it's for her, not the hospital. The details melted away in the room. Cora has since forgotten what flowers, what food they agreed on (what she remembers is laces falling apart, sheets being pushed and pulled). The housekeeper threw this party, that she would not, could not argue (though the gloved women and their narrow husbands all praise her instead), but it feels as though it is for her and no one, nothing else.

She floats through the crowds, sometimes near Robert and sometimes far. She adjusts her hat and steadies her smile. She laughs and says those aimless, airy phrases. She greets guest after guest after guest, but all the while, she is only looking for one person.

One person and a coat.

* * *

She doesn't let herself stop. She ushers her the maids, sweeps by the footmen. It all must be perfect. (Not for Cora, not just for Cora, but because this is, more than anything else, her first garden party. Because she is the housekeeper now and if she has no other virtues - not anymore - she will, at the very least, be competent. She will not let them doubt her.)

When she isn't bustling about, she finds Mr. Carson's side, rests beside it. (Her head turns to the side always, avoiding Miss O'Brien's glare, the way Cora flies between crowds.)

"Are you cold?" Mr. Carson asks.

"No, I'm fine," she says, though her hands shudder as she toys with the sleeve of her dress.

"Chill aside," the butler continues, "it is an excellent party."

She smiles at him, however briefly. "Did you doubt my ability, Mr. Carson?"

"Never." (And it doesn't feel so cold anymore.)

They stand in silence for a minute or three, but Elsie feels perfectly at ease. She breathes. It's simple and it's wonderful. She breathes.

But when the Countess flickers in her peripherals, she can't help but bite her lip.

"Would you be one of them," she finds herself asking, "if you could, Mr. Carson?"

"It's not my place to question what I wasn't -"

"Are we not friends, Mr. Carson?"

The butler pauses.

"I would certainly like to believe so, Mrs. Hughes."

"Then you must be honest with me. Would you be one of them, if you could?"

"No."

When she says nothing in reply (she didn't know what she expected to hear, wanted to hear), he clears his throat, "And you, Mrs. Hughes? Would you be one of them if you could?"

"No, Mr. Carson," she's surprised by the confidence in her voice, "No I would not."

She watches the ladies trapeze through the lawn, feathers in their hair, jewels clutching their neck, some wrapped in heavy furs. (And at its centre, the pulse and breath of the whole affair, is Cora.)

"No, I think I would hate it, if we are being perfectly honest, Mr. Carson," but her voice is only sad, seeped in pity not anger. She breathes in.

She breathes out, "I think I would come to loathe it very much."

* * *

She finally sees the housekeeper after fighting her way through a maze of fractured grins and empty compliments. (They are meaningless to her; there's only one thing, one thing that matters.)

She sees Elsie Hughes balancing carefully next to Charles Carson, almost but not quite touching. She sees Elsie Hughes shivering in the wind. She sees Elsie Hughes and the world becomes very cold. (Something inside her screams until it breaks, something inside her snaps. A light goes out, a door shuts, and she's left with clawing emptiness and darkness - nothing more. Nothing at all.)

She sees Elsie Hughes and she understands.

(But understanding doesn't make the light go on; understanding doesn't take the pain away.)

* * *

O'Brien is lacing up her corset - or maybe she isn't. She can't tell; she can't feel her fingers.

She can't feel a single thing.

(She wonders if they are rough, wishes for them to be, but finds she wouldn't even mind if they were smooth.)

Something inside her crumples. She doesn't realize she's crying until the corset constricts around her ribs and she finds O'Brien's eyes in the mirror.

"M'lady?"

"Oh, O'Brien," her voice, flimsy and small, belongs to a stranger. She grabs O'Brien's hand. It's cooler than hers. She grabs her maid's hand and squeezes it until there's no colour left, nothing left. She doesn't want to let go; she doesn't want O'Brien to be able to let go.

They stay like that for a few minutes, nothing but a few splintered reflections and the absence of colour.

Eventually, she lets go, "Thank you, O'Brien, I can manage." Her voice sounds more familiar.

"Are you sure, M'lady?" O'Brien hasn't moved her hand.

"Yes, quite." (But, truthfully, she's not sure of much anymore.)

When O'Brien leaves, she tries to find herself in the mirror. Her face is framed normally. That's her necklace (a gift from her mother) and her earrings (a gift from her sister-in-law - is anything hers? Or did she give all of it away? Construct herself out of the pieces others left behind?), but the features sit on her face all wrong. She doesn't know who she is, what she is. Not anymore.

She raises her chin, breathes in sharply, seeking different lighting, a better angle.

She'll try harder, she decides, leave behind her New York dreams. She'll fix her phrasing again, listen to Robert's stories better. She'll remind him that he does love her; she'll teach herself that she loves him.

After all, she thinks (it is, she realizes, incredibly lonely to only have one pair of eyes in the mirror), people fall in love every day.

She is no exception.

* * *

_And that's it! I'm not too sure how this ended up being longer than "Perfect Strangers" (it seems with each fic, my stories just get longer and more and more tedious), but uh, if you've stuck around this long, you are fantastic beyond words. Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, as you probably know by now, I appreciate it an awful lot!_


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